The UK Is Being Invaded By Giant Alcoholic Moths

Nope, this isn’t a Daily Mail article about immigration. We’re talking about real moths - specifically massive ones as big as your palm and rather fond of wine.

The Convolus Hawk-moth, which is not only one the largest moths in Europe but also the second most badass-named moth (more on that later), is currently in the process of migrating across to the UK in swarms of hundreds.

To give you an insight into their terrifying size, their wingspan is over 10cm and their tongue (moth buffs would call it a proboscis) is larger than it’s entire body. It’s basically the Gene Simmons of the moth world.

More interestingly, their two favourite things in the world are tobacco and wine. You literally couldn’t make this up. The flying hellbeasts love nothing more than sucking out the nectar of tobacco plants and drinking up wine. Mostly wine.

They love it, can’t get enough of it. In fact, they love it so much that Moth Hunters (actually called Lepidopterist) often drench lengths of rope in the red stuff in an effort to lure in the creatures.

You could argue that they are then, in effect, giant flying alcoholics. Although legally we can’t say for sure in case they get angsty and take us to court for defamation. You know what moths are like.

The moth-breed heads over to English shores once a year but for some unknown reason they’ve decided to head over early in 2015 and experts are expecting us to be flooded with a record-high of the things.

Richard Fox, head of recording at Butterfly Conservation said: “It’s already been an amazing year for moth immigration and such activity usually peaks in early autumn.”

The Convolus-Hawk joins around 40 other species of migrant moths that are appearing in the UK, alongside the infamous moth made famous by the film Silence of the Lambs known as Death’s-Head Hawk (told you).

[Via: Telegraph]